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Agenda item
Update on Guidance Received and Progress To Date
(Victoria Conheady, Assistant Director Regeneration and Culture)
(10 minutes)
Minutes:
Victoria Conheady, Assistant Director Regeneration and Culture explained that no further official guidance had been received and there hasn’t been any further action on the timescale.
However, two letters have been received from Secretaries of State and there will be a Towns Hub team established to enable contact within central government. The secretary of state for education has also made a specific request that colleges be involved with the Towns Funds development. There is considerable expectation on the need to deliver skills and enterprise infrastructure support.
The council have also made an agreement on the town boundary, as initially the area did not cover the whole administrative area but now it does. There is a link on the Town Deal webpages on the website.
In terms of contracts and expertise, at the last board community engagement was discussed and support that will be needed to write the investment plan. These two consultancies are being separated and HBC will be looking at tendering the work over the next few weeks. For Invitation to Quote, around community engagement and investment plan we would ask the board to identify any organisations that have been used in the past and send these through to TownDeal@hastings.gov.uk
We will look to the Executive Delivery Group to help recruit the consultants.
The team are also recruiting a Regeneration Communications Officer whose time will be spent primarily on this project and other capital projects. There is an aim to update the webpages as soon as possible.
Several other funders and developers have also been met in the past few weeks to discuss opportunities in the town.
There is a strong steer from government that towns who are bidding for this funding need to work together and share best practice. The board should keep in contact particularly with towns in the SELEP region which are also involved with the Towns Fund.
The Co-chair opened the floor for any questions.
Question: Any projects that come forward as a result of this town deal will still be subject to HM Treasury Green Book appraisals which states that it has to be a 2:1 cost to benefit ratio (the Benefit Cost Ratio(BCR) considers the impacts to the economy, society, the environment and the public accounts. It offers an estimate of the value of benefit generated for every £1 of public expenditure on a project or scheme). In regeneration areas such Hastings this is often difficult to achieve. The government was going to review this but is there any update on this?
It was explained that nothing has happened yet, but it is important to have a collective response to government expressing how difficult this ratio is to achieve.
The board agreed that this is something that needs to be registered individually but also needs to go back to the regional partnership and ask them to raise this issue with government as well. This is one of the values that the LEP can bring to the Town Fund.
ACTION 1: Begin lobbying evidence on the difficulty of achieving the 2:1 cost ratio for funding as set out in the treasury Green Book appraisals, both individually and collectively.
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